VICTORA: Daughter’s organ donation shows independence

Published: Saturday, July 27, 2013 at 03:17 PM.

From the moment our kids are born, we make decisions that guide their fate. We choose everything from their pediatricians to the toys they put in their mouths.

We decide what they wear, eat and drink, how long and where they sleep, whether they watch TV or learn how to swim or play in organized sports.

We give them a name that, for better or worse, they will answer to forever.

And then they grow.

They start to exercise control over what to wear, what to eat and what sports they enjoy.

This happens before they even have a full vocabulary. They say no, they cry, they sit down when you want them to stand and stand when you want them to sit.

Parents still have the upper hand, but as the years pass our decisions matter less and their decisions matter more.

And we realize we are being measured less by our successful decision-making than by our children’s. Teaching them to do it well, and then allowing them to do it, was all part of the job.

I knew that — all of that — intellectually, at least.

But I still wasn’t prepared to sit beside my daughter in the tax collector’s office, where she went to get her driver license learner’s permit last week.

“Do you want to be an organ donor,” the clerk asked my 15-year-old daughter. Uncertain, my daughter looked at me, asked me if I was an organ donor and then said she wanted to be one, too.

And it was right there — 15 years passing in a blur from her sleepless infant days to her first wobbly steps to this moment in a sterile public office.

Did she want to be an organ donor? My heart stopped, not because she didn’t make the right decision but because it was hers, 100 percent hers.

And I realized in that moment that we raise our children to be their own persons, to make their contributions for their own sake, to make decisions independent and sometimes contrary to the ones we would make for them.

My daughter came from my body, but what she does with hers is a decision only she can make.

Later on the car ride home, she told me the thought of being an organ donor freaked her out a little and she didn’t want to think about it.

Neither do I. No one does.

But as a young woman on the verge of adulthood, she was forced to think about it and make a decision — her decision.

From the moment our kids are born, we make decisions that guide their fate. We choose everything from their pediatricians to the toys they put in their mouths.

We decide what they wear, eat and drink, how long and where they sleep, whether they watch TV or learn how to swim or play in organized sports.

We give them a name that, for better or worse, they will answer to forever.

And then they grow.

They start to exercise control over what to wear, what to eat and what sports they enjoy.

This happens before they even have a full vocabulary. They say no, they cry, they sit down when you want them to stand and stand when you want them to sit.

Parents still have the upper hand, but as the years pass our decisions matter less and their decisions matter more.

And we realize we are being measured less by our successful decision-making than by our children’s. Teaching them to do it well, and then allowing them to do it, was all part of the job.

I knew that — all of that — intellectually, at least.

But I still wasn’t prepared to sit beside my daughter in the tax collector’s office, where she went to get her driver license learner’s permit last week.

“Do you want to be an organ donor,” the clerk asked my 15-year-old daughter. Uncertain, my daughter looked at me, asked me if I was an organ donor and then said she wanted to be one, too.

And it was right there — 15 years passing in a blur from her sleepless infant days to her first wobbly steps to this moment in a sterile public office.

Did she want to be an organ donor? My heart stopped, not because she didn’t make the right decision but because it was hers, 100 percent hers.

And I realized in that moment that we raise our children to be their own persons, to make their contributions for their own sake, to make decisions independent and sometimes contrary to the ones we would make for them.

My daughter came from my body, but what she does with hers is a decision only she can make.

Later on the car ride home, she told me the thought of being an organ donor freaked her out a little and she didn’t want to think about it.

Neither do I. No one does.

But as a young woman on the verge of adulthood, she was forced to think about it and make a decision — her decision.